Visited Taoyuan yesterday, and saw a Taiwanese motorcyclist wearing a grey Nazi helmet, complete with tilted, clockwise swastika.* I wondered if he was even remotely aware that he was celebrating an ideology that would have classified him as an untermenschen.
Ah, well. Not everybody can be a rocket scientist.
Seeing him though, made me regret that I didn’t go to yesterday’s anti-Chen rally in Taipei. Likely as not, there would have been one of those Chen-as-Hitler effigies present, which I’d really have liked to have gotten a picture of. I suppose it’s the irony that appeals to me. This week, Chen voluntarily ‘delegated’ some of his powers, heeding demands by members of his party who were fed up with his falling poll numbers and an insider-trading scandal involving his brother-in-law.
Voluntarily relinquishing power – sure sounds like Hitler to me!
All this aside, the request to delegate executive power initially struck me as being unconstitutional, and indeed, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT argued exactly that on Thursday. Opposed to this were other commentators, who pointed out that since the limits of the Taiwanese presidency are vaguely defined in the first place**, relinquishing some of the powers that the president currently holds poses no constitutional problem. Taking this a step further, Joe Hung of the China Post (and no friend to Chen) wrote that the only power the ROC president is explicitly given is the power to appoint the premier, so Chen’s decision to delegate really represents a movement to a more faithful reading of the constitution. If Hung is right, then Ma is surely wrong: It can hardly be unconstitutional for a president to relinquish powers he was never authorized to exercise in the first place.
Regardless of who’s right, the opposition can smell the blood in the water***. To the consternation of his supporters however, Ma is playing it cool on all the talk of impeachment, claiming that he prefers to pull the trigger when he can be certain of hitting his mark. Here though, he leaves unspoken the very real possibility that impeachment proceedings may do little more than rally dispirited and disillusioned Chen supporters. Because while alleged insider trading by a brother-in-law may be politically embarrassing, it certainly isn’t an impeachable offence, provided that the President himself wasn’t personally involved in the matter.
* The orientation of the swastika is not an unimportant detail, as a level, counter-clockwise swastika is a Buddhist symbol here, which is frequently used on signs to designate vegetarian restaurants.
** If the limits of the ROC presidency are truly ill-defined, then surely that would be an additional argument in favor of further constitutional reform.
*** Not being an ROC constitutional scholar, I’m still trying to figure all of this out. But what I CAN say with some confidence is that there probably isn’t much constitutional basis for opposition demands that Vice-President Annette Lu step down because of her "lack of charisma". I may not know much, but I’m reasonably sure that being charismatically-challenged isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor.
UPDATE (Jun 4/06): I neglected to mention that some of the responsibilities that Chen gave up have nothing to do with his position as president, and instead are due to his position as a party heavyweight. At least some of this should therefore be viewed as an intra-party power struggle, rather than as a constitutional violation.